c.s.s. Sinclair FAQ domains recovered
After the original registrant of the sinclairfaq.org and sinclairfaq.net domains went missing, the domains expired years ago and were snapped up by someone else.
I noticed they were finally available again now and registered both right away.
So, the official domains are finally back in the hands of the scene. :-)
The FAQ is a bit out of date, of course. Would anyone be interested in maintaining it?
I noticed they were finally available again now and registered both right away.
So, the official domains are finally back in the hands of the scene. :-)
The FAQ is a bit out of date, of course. Would anyone be interested in maintaining it?
Post edited by mheide on
Comments
I'd be interested in helping bring the FAQ up to date. Been meaning to get more active in the scene :)
Sound good?
Great, thank you!
I believe the previous maintainers used a set of scripts to maintain the lot; the signature at the bottom of the pages suggest so.
As such, it may be worth getting in touch with them to see if they got anything that may help with the job. 'pak21' is Philip Kendall, a regular poster in this forum.
I have a number of concerns.
lol, yeah I was thinking the same thing. A bunch of folks from a forum messing with the faq for a newsgroup?? That would be some nerve...
Write games in C using Z88DK and SP1
I'll second that.
Hi Philip,
As it happens, I agree with all of that. Net access at the weekends is sporadic for me, otherwise I'd have tackled some of it already in previous posts...
There's absolutely no point in doing this if it's going to annoy scene members. I will be the model of restraint and diplomacy. Maybe we'll end up with a new WoS FAQ and preserve the CSS FAQ alongside it, just to pull one solution out of the air...
I see other WoSers have also volunteered to help. Great stuff, it'll happen much more smoothly with a team. Hey, other volunteers: would you be happy with me being the 'editor' of this project? We could do it a bit like the Speccy reviews books, where I post up a list of what needs to be done, we all write them, then I assemble them?
Family life calls - more later :)
I hope this includes bringing the FAQ more in line with the tech wikia. Some of the details are rather out of date and inaccurate and it would be nice if the FAQ is brought up to speed.
Bytes:Chuntey - Spectrum tech blog.
Absolutely, there's been huge strides made in the last few years. An up-to-date executive summary with a link to the tech wiki would be the way to go.
On the more general issue of "bringing the FAQ more into line" a rewrite from scratch might be the best way to go. By nature it's going to share similarities with the CSS FAQ, but unless we get explicit permission from all the original writers, we should avoid wholesale cutting and pasting. It's one thing to approach the original authors and offer them the option to preserve their work alongside a new WoS FAQ, quite another to say "We have your old domain, can we have all your work too?"
On Crisis' suggestion to build the new FAQ on a wiki: there's merit to that, particularly when it comes to incorporating people's contributions... but I'm still thinking of doing it on a WoS thread for now. I think we're more likely to attract contributions by doing it in-house, as it were, than on a seperate site. Also, a forum thread is better for interleaving direct text contributions with more generalised useful musings.
EDIT: I've posted a message on comp.sys.sinclair, saying we're going to make a WoS FAQ, and asking what presence they would like the c.s.s. FAQ to have on the rebooted sinclairfaq site.
As I said, I offered to help with what I can do.
The domain was specifically acquired in early 2003 (according to the What's New pages of WoS) to become a hub for FAQs, whether they are Spectrum, c.s.s., or for other Sinclair systems.
There's a QL FAQ listed that can safely be removed altogether - the same FAQ was on WoS and the QL users group asked for its removal since it's well over 10 years old and thus a bit worthless (similarly, the ZX81 FAQ that got missing from the hub but which was on WoS has also gone due to being well over 10 years old).
Looking at the discussion in c.s.s., there is no actual interest in the c.s.s. FAQ anymore. I'm not completely surprised, seeing no attempt to maintain it has been made for more than 4 years.
Hence, an independent new FAQ makes sense.
The suggested approach for a new FAQ indeed sounds the way to go! The Tech Wiki seems to work well as a mechanism (could do with more contributors, though), so linking to it for the relevant subjects makes a lot of sense.
I think the most requested part at this moment could be the links section. We often get requests for a link to a Spectrum related site, which is not honoured on WoS. The FAQ used to be the place for those...
I'm working on it too, with some relief that zeropolis79 is doing some of the weighty technical stuff :)
I'll post specifics to the specific thread when they're done.
Martijn, thanks for the clarifications and notes. We can ask WoSsers exactly how they want their FAQ presented (wiki for all, plain html rip thereof, whatever) nearer the time.
I'm especially interested in the set of Speccy related websites, as link requests are made weekly on WoS and I have to decline most of them (as they should be in the FAQ).
Is anyone working on that bit at all?
I realise this is going slower than my fellow WoSsers would like, it's certainly going too slow for my liking, but once I've done the stuff I'm doing, I'll open it up to more contributors, those contributors should be able to build on what I've done to get up to speed quickly, and things will tick along much more pleasingly.
So what have I been doing, in and around the ever-looming Real Life? Logistics, basically. When you enter the FAQ, you should see the relevant bits of the old FAQ(s) sliced up and dropped into useful places in the new FAQ skeleton - the idea being that contributors can dive right in, using them for reference or editing them up to date (it's held in a wiki, so this will be straightforward). I've also been writing some entries, but with limited time, I've concentrated on the scaffolding instead of the brickwork, as it were.
When I do reach this stage, and open the doors to all-comers, the FAQ questions will obviously be a work in progress, but the related stuff like the links to Sinclair fansites should be useful straight away. If anyone wants to suggest sites for this section, PM me. I intend to have that bit all shiny in time for launch. Not in a finished way, of course, there's always more sites to be added, but useful and comprehensive on Day One.
I am slow, but I will get the job done. You may wish to think of me as a tortoise in that respect. In fact, I insist on it :)
I'll check in every couple of days to see this thread and any PMs of useful sites, but otherwise I will resurface in a fortnight. See you then!
Real life does seem to have that habit - the number of things that take priority over my perfectly reasonable fandom of a 28 year old computer system! Tsk, tsk :)
Also got ten ton of work on... I've got a few hours free now.. so I'm going to try and do some of my FAQ stuff..
Well, your work is hugely appreciated. I evidently have a simpler life than you (wife / two kids / job, increasingly going beyond the 9-5 remit but still enjoyable) and I find it hard to slot in Speccy time, so much kudos to you for juggling all that and still managing it.
My work isn't 9-5 as I work freelance but it still takes a fair whack. I'm known to work in the middle of the night (to the dismay of the wife) to meet a deadline.
could I sugest that the link is updated to:-
http://www.jupiter-ace.co.uk/